


Headaches

by icarus_chained



Series: Newfoundland Base [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action, Aftermath, Comrades in Arms, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 02:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick is naming all his headaches 'Stark'. Sooner or later, the man will deserve it.</p><p>... This is a slightly random direct sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/400510">Covered</a>. Featuring Nick Fury and Tony Stark limping their way out of the remains of the Newfoundland base, leaving quite a few enemies buried behind them. Nick POV. *shrugs faintly*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headaches

"You know, I don't think this is part of my contract." The voice was low, ragged. Absurdly cheerful, considering the rather thorough ruin around them. "I'm pretty sure carrying the head of the organisation through the shattered remains of one of his bases -with a wrenched shoulder, no less- does not, in fact, come under the heading of 'consulting'. I mean. I'm just saying."

Nick closed his eyes. Took a deep, cleansing breath, making sure to keep his hand relaxed and steady around his gun.

Then, carefully, recognising the genuine complaint buried under there, he shifted his weight, putting it down a little more on his busted ankle, and off Stark's wrenched shoulder.

"Considering that I'm mobile, on my feet, and outweigh you by a considerable amount, Stark," he noted, a little amused despite himself, "I don't think anyone will believe you were _carrying_ me anywhere."

They could avoid mentioning the trip up the disabled elevator shaft, at least. It absolutely did not count as carrying someone if you rigged yourself up a motorised pulley system out of parts scavenged from a maintenance closet, and hooked it up to the power source plugged into your chest to carry two people up four floors to just under ground level.

It counted as _something_ , mind. Just not carrying him. Nick Fury did not _do_ being carried.

"Whatever you want to tell yourself, Nick, honey," Stark grinned, reaching up to brush sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes, settling Nick's arm more comfortably around his shoulders. Almost completely hiding the wince of relief as the weight lessened on his shoulder. Nick tried to ignore the bizarre feeling of pride that flickered through him. "And, you know, you wouldn't outweigh me by half as much if you hadn't got most of the SHIELD armoury stashed in your fucking _coat_. I mean, what's up with that?"

"I like to be prepared," Nick demurred, grinning a little viciously at the huff he got. "It came in handy, didn't it?"

When the lights of rescue coming down the remains of the stairwell had, in fact, proven to be incoming hostiles. Hostiles locked on to the energy signature nestled irremovably in Stark's chest, fully aware that one of them, at least, was trapped down there. Hostiles that had no intention of leaving without the reactor, whether or not it still had Tony's chest attached.

They hadn't known Nick was there. They hadn't stopped to check, either. So sure that Stark was alone, that he was injured, that having most of a stairwell fall on you adequately rendered you helpless. Which, even if Stark _had_ been alone, would have been a damn stupid assumption to make. There was a list of people, including most of an Afghani terrorist base, a power-mad company CFO, a power-mad company C _E_ O, a Russian terrorist, and an _alien god_ , who'd made that mistake before them. It hadn't ended well for any of them. But trying it on in a SHIELD base, without accounting for the possibility that there would be SHIELD operatives still up and running, was pretty much asking for what they got.

On the bright side, after a rather hammy performance from Stark as a trapped, helpless billionaire desperate for rescue, they'd managed to make their enemies do most of the work extracting them from the few tonnes of rubble surrounding them. It was always nice, when you could make your enemy do your dirty work. 

Not so nice afterwards, when you had to shoot them in the head at close range for it, but still.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony grunted, staggering a little bit. He was a lot fitter than he'd been before Afghanistan, by all accounts, but then he also had a lot more to compensate for now. Without the armour, and having to take even as much of Nick's weight as he was, he was starting to fray. Badly. "And people accuse _me_ of being paranoid."

Nick laughed, faintly, a ragged chuckle. "Stark, you are honestly one of the most paranoid men I've ever seen. And I say that as a spy." He smiled, a little darkly. "One who, what was it you said? Whose secrets have secrets?" Tony flinched, a little bit, and Nick grinned. Yeah. Yours aren't the only walls with ears, Stark. Don't ever believe different. 

"You ... are not a nice man," Tony said, frankly, and maybe a touch admiringly. "I don't know if anyone's ever told you that."

Nick let his smile turn dark, lopsided. "A few," he agreed, quietly. "More than a few. Nice doesn't get you far, the game we play, Stark."

"... I know," Stark said. Softly, and seriously, and Nick looked down at the head tucked under his arm in surprised appraisal. Stark resolutely refused to meet his gaze, refused even to stare defiantly at the eyepatch. But his free hand, the one not wrapped heavily around Nick's waist, tightened faintly around the remaining pulse charges he'd liberated from the enemy. 

Nick winced, a little. Those things packed one hell of a punch. Even close proximity was enough to scramble your brains for you. He hadn't had this much of a headache since he'd gotten creased in the temple with a sniper round that one time. And having your crazy weapons engineer 'consultant' set one off right on top of you to knock a wall onto pursuing hostiles didn't help either. 

Nor, he had to admit, did seeing the darkness in said consultant's eyes as he timed it, down to the last second, to make sure every last one of them was in range of the blast. Nor did having to watch the flinch, the more-than-just-physical recoil, in the man afterwards. The tremble in his hands, before he fixed that devil-may-care smile back on, and started complaining about how, just because you hadn't been the world's top weapons engineer for a few years, people started doubting your ability to blow shit up efficiently.

Nick resisted the urge to rub his temples. He was considering naming his headache 'Stark'. In fact, he was considering naming _all_ his headaches 'Stark'. One way or another, he suspected the man would work his way around to earning the honour.

"If it's any consolation," he offered, mildly, but genuinely, watching the shake in Tony's hand, the darkness directed inwards in the curve of his head. "I'm nastier than you'll ever be, Stark. Bet your ass." 

Same as he'd been nastier than Tony's father. Howard, much like Tony, hadn't liked the ragged, bleeding edges of this job. Howard, much like Tony, had been very, very good at them, when something pushed him into it. When someone knew _how_ to push him into it.

It had been one of the reasons Nick had believed Stark was worth betting on, when it came down to the line. It had been one of the reasons Nick ... had been _ready_ to push, whatever buttons needed pushing, knowing full well the consequences to both of them.

It was one of the reasons he knew, with complete confidence, that he wasn't lying. He was more a monster than Stark would ever be.

Tony looked up at him. Startled, suspicious, squinting narrowly up into Nick's face. Nick forcibly kept his mouth from twitching, from smiling, and wondered how, even after everything, nearly forty years and a not-inconsiderable amount of bloodshed down the line, the man could look so damned _young_.

"Ri-ight," Stark said, slowly and suspiciously. "Did you, by any chance, crease your head when that wall collapsed? Or did I crease _my_ head? Because that was almost _nice_ , Fury, and considering I woke up in your lap earlier, that's ... kinda alarming, really. I'm starting to think I might have woken up in the Twilight Zone or something. Which, given our lives, is nowhere _near_ as implausible as I would like it to be."

Nick grinned, let himself, a show of teeth in the steadily lightening gloom of the corridor, as they came up on the stairs up to the remains of the entrance lobby to the base. Looking down at himself, at the pair of them. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, covered in cement dust, limping badly, with a gun in his hand and Tony Stark's arm around his waist. Stark himself, wild-eyed, with blood in his hair and a small cluster of bombs in his free hand, doing his best to keep Nick upright. Just ... looking, for a second, at the picture they made.

The SHIELD rumour mill was going to have a hell of a lot of fun, with this one. Even with all the work Nick planned on dumping on them, figuring out who the hell had knocked over their base, where they got their tech, and how the _fuck_ they'd gotten as far as they had. Even with that. The gossip factory was going to have a field day.

Yes, oh yes, he was naming the headache in Stark's honour. Every damn headache he'd ever had. If there was one thing you could count on in this world, it was that, sooner or later, Stark would work his way around to deserving it.

"You know what, Stark?" he said, and he figured his smile had more teeth in it than Tony was really comfortable with, from the nervous light that appeared in the man's eyes. "I think Twilight Zone just about covers it." 

And after the day he'd had, Nick was going to _shoot_ the first person who said a word about it.


End file.
